How bent spaghetti break

More movies

Here are some typical experiments. Breaking sometimes occurs near the clamped end, that is the end opposed to the one that is released (upper right movie). This can be understood from the interferences of the incident and reflected wave, which is stronger at the clamped end. Note that fragmentation can be observed even in this simple catapult geometry (lower movies) provided the initial curvature is close enough to the limit curvature. Successive breaking events can be understood as a cascade of release and delayed breaking events.